NFC phone-tap app makes money!

By winning a competition for developers

Common Topics

Touchanote is getting $50,000 of Evernote's VC cash as the winner of the company's developer competition, turning Touchanote into the most profitable NFC app ever.

That's according to NFC World, which congratulated the developers on finding an application for NFC that doesn't involve proximity payments, and on making money even if that money comes from a company which is itself still raising venture capital.

Touchanote links Evernote entries to NFC tags, which the company will sell you (in the form of stickers) at a dollar a pop. Wave your (NFC-equipped) phone at one of the tags and the linked note pops up on the screen.

The company reckons you might want to pull up your shopping list by waving your phone at a tag on the fridge, or connect a picture frame to an Evernote album of related pictures. The idea isn't new, Violet's Mir:ror did much the same thing in 2008, but the tech being embedded in a phone should help, as should the integration with Evernote (not to mention the $50,000).

Cloud-based notebook Evernote reckons it has 11 million regular users, and has raised $95.5m from investors, including $50m it took in last month. That money was, the company told TechCrunch, just to fund acquisitions – such as Skitch – which was snapped up last week – as Evernote is still sitting on the $20m it raised last October and is profitable.

Which means it can afford to hand over $50,000 to Touchanote, and $10,000 to a page-turning book reader and a desktop app allowing one's cloud-based notes to be piled and spread about just as untidily as one's physical bits of paper. ®